h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I would like to read more books. So I thought it would be nice to keep track of the books I have read this year.

I have just finished 'The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh' by Chiang Yee

(Synopsis on Amazon).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Traveller-Edinburgh-Chiang-Yee/dp/1841830488

Chiang Yee was an exhile from Mao's China, a poet and an artist, who living in England during the second world war. He wrote a number of travel books about his impressions of the UK and elsewhere, and this is his account of wartime Edinburgh.

He also illustrated the books with Chinese Style illustrations, and wrote poems about the places he visited. It was a charming and evocative account of wartime Edinburgh, I was throughly enchanted.

I found that I need to learn more about Chinese art and poetry, and also that I would learn more about Scotland if I read the words of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.

for Christmas I gave my wife the book "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking.
The first chapter ended
"In this book we intend to give you the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. And Unlike the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy tghe answer won't be simply "42."

Ooh that looks interesting...

*adds to the list of boks we need to read*

From my daughter, I got Le Petit Prince by st Exupery, in french which I haven't studied since I was 18, and not spoken much... I got The Windup Bird Chronicle by Murakami from my bonus son. That will be an interesting read! I've read two other Murakami books, and they are delightfully strange, in a mysterious way.

Just finished a Biography of Robert Owen, which I brought at New Lanark.. (guide entry needed there..).

at the Swedish term 'bonus son'.

(oh - and i've just downloaded Murakami's IQ84)

I love the term Bonus Son. I've decided I have a bonus sister as well.

Currently reading Andrew Marr's the Making of Modern Britain, and listening to a history of the periodic table.

Following a couple of themes:

'The Periodic Table' - Primo Levi. Not really about the periodic table. About Auschwitz.

'Lanark' - Alasdair Gray. Not really about Lanark. About...well if you can work it out you can explain it to the rest of us.

MMm.. interesting. I think I'll acquire both of those fairly quickly. Fortunately my Kindle isn't at work with me..

Whatever happened to paper books eh?

Which reminds me Z, I've still got your History of Christianity.

I have about 2 rooms full of paper books.... I prefer them but when I realise I'm spending £100s of pounds a month to rent space for books. Well that's not ok.

Can you bring it to the manchester meet?

Well they're both classics.

Although for Levi, *the* classic is 'If This Is A Man.'

And for Gray...the one I always recommend is 'Poor Things' which is a sort of Pygmalion-meets-Frankenstein in Victorian Glasgow with layers of po-mo multiple narration kinda thing. 'Lanark' is also very, very good though - and has a neat, explicit Vonnegut reference - but is...weird.

Me:

'You Talking To Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama' - Sam Leith. Not bad, although the author is a bit full of himself.

I've just been given a Kindle to replace the one I left in a hotel. I think I'll always prefer the serendipity of finding Real books in charidee and other second hand shops, but Kindles are useful for illicit porpoises.

I'm sitting here and haven't got a thing to read. Somehow, I didn't get any books for Christmas, I read all the ones I brought on the train/plane, and all the ones I've been planning to read are in boxes in Belfast.

Well, I did get *one* new book, but it's the second part in a series, of which I'd have to read the first again because it's been a while, and I'm not sure I can be bothered with that because I hate re-reading things I half remember. My memory for books/films is terrible.

Do you want me to mail you some books?

Thanks for the offer, but by the time they get here, I'd be reunited with mine anyway. I'll just have to see what I can borrow here.

So far this year I have read Anthony Horowitz' "The House of Silk", Andy Kaufman's "The Waterproof Bible" and am now embarking on Haruki Murakami's "1Q84". So far so good. Determined to read nothing but new work this year as falling into a William Gibson binge is so nineties!

Tim.

I read a book once.

Long time ago now.

Not sure I'd remember what to do...